


Without You

by MirrorMystic



Series: Secret Keepers [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Pre-Poly, Pre-Relationship, Secret Keeper AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: Life in Ram just wasn't the same without Celica.
Relationships: Alm/Anthiese | Celica, Alm/Anthiese | Celica/Efi | Faye, Alm/Efi | Faye, Anthiese | Celica/Efi | Faye
Series: Secret Keepers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639600
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	Without You

**Author's Note:**

> _The world revives, colors renew_   
>  _But I know blue, only blue_   
>  _Lonely blue..._

~*~  
  
It’s only been a day.  
  
Faye still hasn’t stopped crying.  
  
It wasn’t too bad, at first. She’d choked back her sobs, wrapped Celica in a bruising hug, and then watched her disappear over the horizon, bundled in Mycen’s arms.  
  
When she got home, that was when the real waterworks started. Hers wasn’t the dignified grief of a fairy tale widow. It was ugly, loud, gasping. She laid on her parents’ bearskin rug and smeared her grief into its fur, while Kliff sat beside her, too awkward as a stepbrother to comfort her, too guilty to simply leave her to her pain.  
  
Eventually, Faye ran out of tears. But the pain didn’t stop. She lay on the floor, whimpering, hollowed out by grief, rubbing at her eyes until they were red and raw.  
  
This, Faye thinks, is the worst day of her life. And, as melodramatic a statement as that seemed, Faye was young enough, and her heart frail enough, that it might very well be true.  
  
Her grandmother, Serafine, was never the type to mince words. Her first instinct is to tell Faye to stop being so dramatic, so in a way, her restraint is her comfort. Instead, Nana Sera simply lays a gentle hand in Faye’s hair without saying a word, before disappearing into the kitchen.  
  
A few hours later, after Kliff has managed to usher Faye to the dining table and Faye’s spent half an hour sniffling and picking halfheartedly at her food, Nana sets a plate down in front of her.  
  
For the first time all evening, Faye perks up. It’s a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie-- her favorite. Nana must have spent the evening baking it just for her, and in her grief, Faye hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t even smelled it as it came out of the oven, she was so stuffed up.  
  
Faye sniffles. She cuts a piece with the side of her fork, and wordlessly takes a bite.  
  
Her first bite is a lot less “strawberry” and a lot more “rhubarb”. The tartness stops Faye in her tracks and very nearly brings a fresh wave of tears to her eyes.  
  
It’s only been a day. Faye is eleven years old, and for the first time in her short life, she feels like she finally understands the meaning of the word “bittersweet”.  
  
~*~  
  
It’s been a few weeks.  
  
The world doesn’t feel right. Summer in Zofia is bright and beautiful. The sun still rises. The world keeps turning. Life goes on, even when you don’t want to.  
  
Faye finds herself strangely indignant about it all. As if the weather had betrayed her. After the days she spent crying her eyes out, the least Zofia could do was cry along with her.  
  
Instead, the skies were clear and sunny for miles, which meant Faye had work to do.  
  
Faye glumly picks her way through Fleecer’s forest. The trees marking the trail have a ring cut around them at chest height, their bark cleanly scraped away so as to expose the pale wood underneath. Nana had cut this trail years and years ago. Faye’s parents had also followed this trail, before…  
  
Faye sighs, and shakes her head. No more tears. There was work to be done.  
  
Faye crouches beside a stand of herbs. She pulls her parents’ field journal from her belt, studying the sketched samples. Five star-shaped leaves, small white flowers.  
  
Faye snaps her journal shut, wraps her fingers around the base of the plant, and gives it a firm yank. The clump of southern griproot comes free in her hand. Good for settling the stomach or easing one into sleep when steeped into a tea. When dried and ground to powder, it made a potent anesthetic.  
  
Faye tucks the herb into her satchel and continues down the path. Every morning at sunrise, like clockwork. She’d been walking this trail from the moment she could walk at all. And there was a certain comfort in routine.  
  
Faye pauses at the next bend, glancing up at the tree marking the trail. The ring of shaved bark around its midsection also has a circle cut into the wood. She glances down, studying the leaf litter until she finds it-- the snare, hidden in the undergrowth, waiting to catch something for Faye’s dinner. Rabbit, usually. Wild chicken, when she was lucky.  
  
But this snare was pulled out of place, and the loop on the end was cut.  
  
A piercing cry through the trees. A bird call like Faye’s never heard. In an instant, Faye has her bow off her shoulder, an arrow nocked and ready. She blows out an anxious breath, scanning the treetops.  
  
Faye studies her surroundings and sears them in her memory. Then, gripping her bow a bit too tightly, she takes a deep breath, and steps off the trail.  
  
She follows the unfamiliar, keening cry to a copse of trees shrouded in curtains of climbing ivy-- a little wooded retreat hiding in plain sight, not ten minutes off the beaten path. Faye creeps forward, each footfall carefully placed to make no sound. Carefully, she reaches up and pulls aside the hanging vines.  
  
Faye gasps.  
  
An hour later, Faye races past a bewildered Mycen and bursts into Alm’s room so forcefully his door bangs against the wall.  
  
“Alm, wake up! You’re not gonna believe this!”  
  
~*~  
  
Everyone has their own way of handling grief. Unlike Faye, who’d buried her face in her parents’ bearskin rug and cried until she couldn’t cry any more, Alm lost himself in books. Mycen’s house didn’t have a proper bookshelf, and Mycen himself didn’t keep many books that weren’t rambling political histories, atlases, or treatises on sword techniques. But Alm had a little wooden chest at the foot of his bed filled with his favorite stories: myths and legends, thrilling adventures, fairy tales. The War of the Stones. The Tragedy of Mila and Novis. Stories of love, loss, and fleeting beauty.  
  
Alm’s spent so much time huddled under his covers and reading by hearthlight that the sunlight makes his eyes water when Faye drags him outside.  
  
It’s slow going, on their way back into Fleecer’s Forest. Alm is slower and clumsier than Faye by far, stepping on every twig, getting his sleeves caught on every bramble. Part of Faye is frustrated by the delay, but another part of her finds it strangely enjoyable: they’re just two friends, sharing a walk in the woods.  
  
That is, until they return to the clearing and find the beast still waiting.  
  
Dark eyes, rimmed with gold. A pair of wings folded against its back. Cloud-gray feathers that glint silver in the right light, darkening to sleek, soft black fur halfway down its body. Eagle talons in front, panther claws behind.  
  
“Alright, Faye. You were right,” Alm stares, his mouth suddenly very dry. “I _don’t_ believe this.”  
  
The creature is still small, scarcely larger than a common housecat. But gods knew that in just a few years, it would grow larger than any stallion.  
  
Imagine the kids’ surprise, then, when this apex predator, champion of the skies, sat down on its haunches, looked up at them, and _chirped_ .  
  
Faye warily steps forward. The creature’s eyes flash her way-- not hostile, but attentive. Expectant, even. Without taking her eyes off the beast, she reaches into her satchel, retrieves a poor little wood mouse from that morning’s round of snares, and sets it on the ground.  
  
Alm blinks. “What, do you just carry those everywhere?”  
  
“Shh!” Faye hisses.  
  
She pulls Alm back as the creature takes a step forward. It inspects the mouse with a sniff, before tossing it into the air and gulping it down with a satisfied chirp.  
  
“A griffin,” Faye breathes. “I didn’t know they were real.”  
  
“They _were_ ,” Alm nods. “But I thought they were extinct. This is… amazing.”  
  
Faye smiles for what feels like the first time in a week. When Alm bumps an elbow into hers, she glances over and realizes that he is, too.  
  
“Hey, Faye?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Their eyes meet, wordless feelings roiling within. In this moment, they are connected: by secrets, by trust, by what they’ve shared, found, and lost.  
  
Alm looks away, his eyes suddenly wet. He takes a shuddering breath, and sighs.  
  
When Faye offers her hand, he takes it without any fuss.  
  
“...Thanks for getting me out of the house,” Alm whispers, wiping his eyes, as Faye only nods and squeezes his hand tight.  
  
~*~  
  
They name the young griffin Ameen. Really, Alm names him, after a hero from one of his stories. In Old Macedon, apparently, the name means something like “honesty” or “trust”, “secret keeper”. Faye, rather less creatively-minded, decides that’s better than simply calling him “Griffin”.  
  
Faye doesn’t feed him every day. It would be easy to, simply a matter of adding another stop on her morning routine of gathering herbs and checking snares. But Alm was adamant about this; Ameen has to learn to hunt for himself, or else he’ll never be able to survive on his own. And, while Alm’s assertion was extrapolated from fairy tales and not Faye’s years of woodcraft passed down through her family, Faye agreed.  
  
That didn’t stop them from visiting Ameen, and often. The other kids might have had their own favorite stomping grounds-- the flower field by town square, the tree swing over the creek-- but Ameen’s alcove was theirs and theirs alone. It felt right, somehow, for Faye and Alm to have their own ‘secret hideout’, no matter how much Gray teased them about it. Faye and Alm were the only ones who knew how much Celica really meant to them both. Why shouldn’t they have a place all to themselves?  
  
It’s been six months. Winter came and went, and with the weather warming up again the kids were back to daily combat training. Every so often Faye wondered if maybe Ram deserved to be raided by bandits, if all they could muster in their defense were a handful of teenagers and a single graying veteran. But ever since Slayde and his knights stumbled across their village and stole Celica from her life, Faye was determined to make this militia training count.  
  
Unfortunately… they still needed work.  
  
An arrow whistles through the air. It dips, falling short of the practice target nailed to the fencepost, and neatly decapitates a poor turnip plant.  
  
“Aw, shit,” Tobin cries in dismay. He yelps as a wooden cane thwaps him over the head.  
  
“Language,” Nana chides.  
  
Faye winces beside him. Partly out of sympathy, partly out of secondhand embarrassment at Tobin’s poor shot, and partly out of the reminder that Nana had started using a cane, if only primarily to berate Tobin’s poor technique.  
  
“Fix your stance,” Nana says, thwapping the insides of Tobin’s shins until he spreads his legs wider apart. “And keep your elbow high and tight. Now. Again. And if you shoot another of my turnips you’re going to get it.”  
  
Tobin exhales. He nocks an arrow, draws it back, and lets it fly. It soars proudly across the field, well above the line of turnip stalks, and punches into the target-- two rings off center.  
  
“Elbows!” Nana snaps, and shakes her head. “...Here. Let Faye show you how a Fletcher shoots an arrow.”  
  
Faye blows out a breath. She nocks an arrow, and pulls it back to her cheek. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alm and Gray, fresh from their sparring match, leaning on the fence and looking on.  
  
“Heads up, Faye,” Tobin grins. “Boys are watching.”  
  
“Oh, shut up, Tobin,” Faye rolls her eyes.  
  
Faye looses her shot. Her arrow sails across the field and punches cleanly into the target-- one ring off from a bullseye.  
  
Dismay curls in Faye’s gut. Nana shakes her head.  
  
“Sloppy,” Nana Sera tuts. “That might be good enough for some people, but I expect better from you, dear.”  
  
Hot shame washes over Faye’s cheeks. Tobin laughs beside her.  
  
“I thought you’d give it your best shot if Alm was watching,” he jeers.  
  
“Well maybe _you’d_ shoot better if _Gray_ was cheering you on,” Faye fires back.  
  
“I bet you would’ve nailed it if _Celica_ was here--”  
  
Faye’s fist cracks into Tobin’s face. He hits the ground, arrows spilling from the quiver strapped to his thigh. He gingerly prods at a bleeding, split lip, staring up at a fuming Faye with fury in her eyes.  
  
“Faye, what--”  
  
“Take. That. Back,” Faye seethes.  
  
“Faye, come on! It’s just a joke!”  
  
“Well, I’m not _laughing_ , am I?!” Faye seethes. She balls her fist--  
  
Nana catches her wrist in a bony hand.  
  
“Faye,” she says, her voice like ice. “Enough.”  
  
“What’s going on here?” Mycen asks as he marches up, Gray and Alm at his heels.  
  
“I don’t know! She just went crazy!” Tobin whines.  
  
“Faye,” Mycen says firmly. “Go cool off.”  
  
Faye doesn’t have to be told twice. She whirls on her heel and storms off, not batting an eye when Alm reaches for her and calls her name.  
  
Alm finds her an hour later, sitting on the grass in their little hideaway, her back propped up against Ameen’s haunches. The little griffin has grown quite a bit in the months since they found him-- the size of a sheepdog, not a housecat, large enough now that Faye can drape a wing over her shoulders like a blanket.  
  
Faye doesn’t say anything when she sees him. She just scoots over without saying a word. Alm takes a seat beside her.  
  
“Hey,” he murmurs.  
  
“Hey,” Faye replies.  
  
“...That was a hell of a punch,” Alm chuckles.  
  
Faye smiles, but it’s a rueful smile. “...Thanks.”  
  
“Listen, Faye,” Alm begins, and Faye’s already rolling her eyes. She can hear the incoming lecture in his voice. He gets that from Mycen. “Everybody deals with loss their own way. Some people want to cry, and that’s okay. Some people want to laugh, and that’s okay, too.”  
  
“Whatever,” Faye grumbles. But when she sees Alm’s hand, open in invitation between them, she still takes it with a squeeze.  
  
“Give them a break, Faye,” Alm urges. “They don’t know.”  
  
“That’s exactly the problem,” Faye fumes. “They joke about it. They laugh about it! They don’t get it. None of them understand what _I_ lost that day. What she meant to me.”  
  
Alm glances away, somber.  
  
“...I do,” he says at last.  
  
Faye exhales. She glances down at their cupped hands, and laces their fingers together.  
  
“...Yeah,” Faye whispers. “You do, don’t you?”  
  
They lean into each other, connected by loss, by the empty space that lingers between them. Ameen, their sanctuary, their secret keeper, draws his wing tighter around the duo and lets out a rumbling in his throat that will one day sound like thunder, but for now, is just a purr.  
  
~*~  
  
It’s been just over a year.  
  
The seasons are turning; the days are still bright and sunny while the nights start bringing the chill. Evening in the Fletcher household sees Nana Sera dozing off in her rocking chair by the fire, while Faye and Kliff sit on the couch with needlework and a good book.  
  
Nana’s been sleeping a lot more often lately. And she hasn’t been as talkative, either. Faye is young, but not so young that she can’t see the warning signs. Most of their evenings are spent in an uneasy quiet, keeping an eye on Nana over the tops of their books.  
  
Kliff, at least, appreciates the peace and quiet. When Faye calls to him across the couch, he makes a show of arching his eyebrow in indignation, huffing a sigh as he places a bookmark into his tome, and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees like a petulant, melodramatic tween.  
  
“...What?” he asks archly.  
  
Faye rolls her eyes. “I just wanted to ask if you knew what time it was.”  
  
“Almost seven-bell. Why?”  
  
Faye is forced to assume that Kliff’s impeccable sense of time is a mage thing, because right on cue, the belltower in the village square rings out the hour. A moment later, there’s a knock on their door.  
  
Faye tosses aside her half-patched hunting cloak and scrambles to her feet.  
  
“Who is it, your boyfriend?” Kliff drawls.  
  
“Shut up, Kliff,” Faye calls back, as she flings the door open.  
  
Alm, unprepared for such an enthusiastic welcome, simply blinks in surprise.  
  
“H-Hey, Faye,” he laughs, sheepish, holding up a box. “I, uh… brought the strawberries.”  
  
Faye leans down, and breathes in the fresh, fruity scent. She blows out a satisfied sigh. She closes her hands over Alm’s, and meets his eyes with a smile.  
  
“They’re perfect.”  
  
Apparently, even _that_ display is too saccharine for Kliff’s tastes, as he scurries off to help Nana into bed and beats a hasty retreat to his room upstairs.  
  
Faye and Alm pay him little mind. They bustle around the kitchen, filling the Fletcher home with light and laughter. Faye still has to remind him where they keep everything, and instruct him on proper strawberry-chopping or dough-kneading technique, but Faye doesn’t mind: if nothing else, Alm takes to baking more readily than woodcraft.  
  
“Why are we doing this again?” Alm asks, as he smears butter across the bottom of a cast-iron pan.  
  
“We’re parbaking the dough,” Faye explains, pressing the buttered pan into the pan containing the pie crust, before sliding them both into the oven. “We’re baking the pie crust first because if we bake it with the filling in it, it’s gonna get soggy.”  
  
Faye glances up. Alm’s watching her with a dopey smile on his face.  
  
“What?” she asks, indignant.  
  
“Nothing,” he says quickly, clearing his throat. “I just… like listening to you explain things.”  
  
“Weirdo…” Faye rolls her eyes, but her cheeks are warm.  
  
Alm roughly chops strawberries and tosses them into a pot on the stovetop, while Faye adds sugar, water, and a generous mound of lemon zest. She’s deviating from Nana’s recipe, she knows, but as she’s gotten older she’s realized she never _really_ cared for rhubarb, and that the tartness from the lemon would cut through the strawberry sweetness just fine.  
  
Alm pulls the two pans from the oven, gasps in wonder as the second pan pulls free without sticking (“That’s why we buttered the bottom”, Faye reminds him) and Faye pours the filling into their finished pie crust. The filling has cooked down into a thick, sticky syrup that still has nice big chunks of strawberry in it, with flecks of lemon zest scattered through the red like confetti. Faye slides their pie back into the oven, shares a satisfied smile with Alm, and then glances sheepishly at the pile of dishes waiting in the sink.  
  
This is the part where Nana would scoff. “Clean up as you go, not all at the end”, she would say. But the job goes by a lot quicker with two, and once the dishes are done and their aprons hung up, Faye and Alm retreat to the living room to wait for their pie to finish baking. They flop down together on the couch, and they talk-- about anything, everything, and nothing at all.  
  
“You know, Nana always tells me not to eat sweets late at night,” Faye grins, as they settle in at the dining table, their pie finished and finally cool enough to eat.  
  
“Sorry,” Alm chuckles, sheepish. “Maybe I should come by earlier next time.”  
  
“It’s okay. Time flies…”  
  
Faye trails off, her smile fading. Alm meets her eyes in sympathy, before taking the cake knife from her hands and cutting them both a slice. Alm sets a plate down in front of them both, while Faye sets a candlestick on the table between them.  
  
Faye blows a kiss into her cupped palm, conjuring a little wisp of flame. She’s hardly the prodigy Kliff is, but she has more than enough potential to light a candle. She reverently sets the wisp atop the candlestick between them. She meets Alm’s eyes across the way, takes a deep breath, and sighs.  
  
“Happy birthday, Celica,” they say together, in the firelight’s glow.  
  
~*~  
  
It’s been months. Eighteen or nineteen; Faye’s stopped counting.  
  
Winter in Zofia. They never really got snow, this far down south, but what they did get were frigid winds and fields full of frost in the mornings. Faye hasn’t been able to visit Ameen in weeks. He’s big now, as big as a horse, and surely with enough fur and feathers to stay warm. But she still worries about him. Or perhaps she’s simply eager to think about anything other than what’s in front of her face.  
  
Pages and pages of arcane formulae and magical theory are penned in Kliff’s tiny, claustrophobic hand, so small and packed so tight it makes Faye’s head spin. She wrenches her gaze away from a bewilderingly detailed magic circle and hands the notebook back to him, blowing out a sigh.  
  
“Good,” she says, though she’d hardly be able to tell otherwise. “Now rewrite these notes in a separate notebook.”  
  
“What’s the point?” Kliff grumbles.  
  
“Rewriting these notes will help you make them neater and easier to read, and it will also help you remember them later.”  
  
“I can already read them just fine,” Kliff protests.  
  
“You’ll thank me for this later,” Faye says patiently. “All this might come naturally right now, but if you never learn to study properly you’ll just get stuck the first time you fail to cast a spell.”  
  
“I never fail,” Kliff preens.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Faye snickers, thwapping him over the head with his own notebook. Kliff snatches his notebook out of her hands and swats her away.  
  
There’s a knock at the door. Faye rises from her seat, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt.  
  
“Is that Alm?” Kliff teases.  
  
“Maybe,” Faye replies.  
  
“He’s been coming over a lot,” Kliff notes.  
  
“Is that a problem?”  
  
“No problem,” Kliff shrugs. “Just an observation.”  
  
Faye rolls her eyes and pulls open the door. Alm greets her with a wave and an armful of ingredients.  
  
“Hey!” Alm smiles bright. He hefts the box in his arms. “I’m sorry I couldn’t manage any strawberries. But I’ve got cherries, and I still have some lemon…”  
  
“Don’t worry. I bet we can figure something out,” Faye beams.  
  
“Do you two ever think you use baking to fill some kind of void in your life?” Kliff drawls from the couch.  
  
“Go _away_ , Kliff!” Faye groans. “Go… help put Nana to bed, or something.”  
  
“Fine…”  
  
Faye takes the boxes of fruit from Alm’s arms and brings them into the kitchen, while Alm slips off his winter cloak and hangs it by the door. He follows Faye into the kitchen and immediately sighs in relief, the residual heat of the oven as warm as any fireplace.  
  
“Oh, that’s good…” Alm breathes, rubbing some feeling back into his hands. He glances over his shoulder, meets Faye’s eyes. “It’s starting to get real chilly at night. It’ll be hard for me to leave.”  
  
“Then stay,” Faye offers lightly. “Kliff’s upstairs. I doubt he’ll mind.”  
  
“Maybe I will,” Alm grins. His eyes light up. “Oh! Before I forget: I got something for you.”  
  
Alm hands her a ribbon-- a deep, midnight blue. It’s a stark contrast to the ribbon Faye already wears every day-- a fiery red the color of sunrise, a gift from Celica on her last day in Ram.  
  
Faye coos in delight and pulls her hair out of its ponytail, parting it so Celica’s ribbon can be paired with Alm’s. She flips her hair girlishly over her shoulders, grinning, though when she catches sight of her reflection in the window, her smile fades.  
  
“...I’m not sure if I’m the twintail type,” Faye winces, giggling.  
  
“Maybe you just need to try something else,” Alm grins. “Braids, maybe.”  
  
“Maybe,” Faye agrees.  
  
Faye’s fingers curl around Celica’s ribbon, wistful. Alm meets her eyes. Once again, they’re connected by the absence, by the empty space between them. A tender moment passes between them; a shared understanding of things unsaid.  
  
The moment shatters with a loud thump upstairs and a string of muttered curses.  
  
“Kliff?” Faye calls, her heart racing.  
  
Kliff shouts down the stairs, his voice tinged with panic.  
  
“Faye! Alm! _Help!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
The next few months pass in a blur.  
  
Mycen sits Kliff and Faye down and talks to them about Nana’s fall, her declining health, and the changes that would have to be made around the house. They move Nana’s bed down into the living room, so she doesn’t have to go upstairs. She’s right by the fireplace, so she can keep warm, and right out in the open so Kliff or Faye can always keep an eye on her.  
  
One would think this experience would bring Kliff and Faye closer together as siblings. And it does, while somehow also pulling them apart. They were never too close; or at least, they were never as close as Faye thought they could have been. Faye wonders if she would have bonded with Kliff more if she hadn’t had Alm to rely on. There was one thing the boys had in common, and that was books. Faye admired that about Alm; how, for all his bravado when sparring with Gray or Tobin, given the choice he’d rather be inside curled up with a good book.  
  
But what Faye admired in Alm was a gulf between her and Kliff. He spent so much time absorbed in books, so much time in his own head. And Faye did everything she could-- baking, hunting, knitting, you name it-- to escape her own unquiet mind.  
  
Someone has to stay with Nana at all times. More often than not, it’s Kliff, who takes a pile of his books downstairs with him every morning and stays on the couch studying all day.  
  
With Kliff’s watchful eye on Nana, Faye is free to go out; to run her errands around town, do her rounds in Fleecer’s Forest, visit Ameen in his alcove whenever she can. But she can’t help the flash of guilt every time she leaves Kliff at home with Nana, wondering if there was resentment budding under his skin.  
  
One night, Kliff asks to go spend the night with Tobin and Gray. Faye lets him, because it’s not like she has any plans. She sits on the couch and looks around-- from the pile of last year’s winter clothes that still need patching, to the little shelf of fantasy novels Alm keeps pushing her way (and she still intends to read eventually), to Nana, dozing off in her rocking chair by the fire.  
  
Faye’s throat feels tight. There’s something… wrong, about this place. Something sinister, unfriendly, unwelcoming. For a moment, she feels vulnerable and alone, her thoughts gnawing at the inside of her skull--  
  
Then there’s a knock at the door, and the demons scurry away.  
  
“Hey,” Alm smiles, bashful. He holds up a box. “I, uh… brought you some oranges.”  
  
“Hey,” Faye chuckles. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I ran into Kliff on his way to Gray’s,” Alm shrugs. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”  
  
The first thing Faye thinks to say is that she’s not alone-- Nana’s with her. But ever since her fall, Nana’s been sleeping so much, and saying so little even when she is awake, that a part of Faye wonders just how true that really is.  
  
“...Thanks,” she says instead, her jaw tight.  
  
“Do you want to bake something?” Alm asks, knowingly.  
  
“I,” Faye manages a smile, “would _love_ that.”  
  
Faye flips through Nana’s cookbook and finds a recipe for lemon meringue pie that she’s confident she can rework with oranges. Alm rolls up his sleeves, Faye pulls their aprons from the wall hook, and the two of them get to work.  
  
Alm doesn’t need to be reminded where they keep the flour or where to find a whisk. He doesn’t need coaching on preheating an oven or dough-kneading technique. He and Faye move together with the practiced grace of those who’ve done this a hundred times before.  
  
Then again, this is the first time either of them have made meringue.  
  
“Am I doing this right?” Alm wonders, glancing at his whisk.  
  
“Stiff peaks,” Faye nods in approval. “That looks okay.”  
  
Alm pokes a finger into the mixture and tastes it. He groans and makes a face.  
  
“It still needs sugar, genius,” Faye chides. She bops him on the head with a rolling pin, and he flicks a handful of flour onto her apron, and the two of them laugh together, bright and clear.  
  
Faye pours the hot orange custard into their parbaked pie crust, and Alm smothers it with a thick layer of meringue. When it comes out of the oven, the swirling peaks of the meringue are a nice toasty brown and the whole house smells like oranges-- which, admittedly, isn’t too out of the ordinary, since all of Valentia always smelled like oranges. The last step of the recipe is to let the pie chill in the icebox until the filling has set, which means Faye and Alm have three hours to kill before they can taste the fruits of their labor.  
  
Faye carefully puts Nana to bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. Alm waits for her, an arm casually slung over the back of the couch. Faye settles in against him, his arm settling across her shoulders without any fuss.  
  
Faye can feel Alm’s smile through his chest.  
  
“What?” she murmurs, her eyes closed.  
  
Alm lifts a braid out from behind her shoulder, tied off with his midnight blue ribbon.  
  
“You went with the braids,” he says.  
  
“You’re just noticing that now?” Faye teases.  
  
“I’m just saying,” Alm chuckles. “It looks good.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Faye leans into him, her head slowly sliding down his shoulder until she settles on his chest. She can hear his heart beating, like a lullaby. It would be so easy to just fall asleep.  
  
“How is she?” Alm asks. She feels his voice rumbling through his chest.  
  
Faye sighs. “...Quiet. She doesn’t talk too much anymore, if she’s even awake. Sometimes, when I’m baking, and I’m reading her recipes, she feels more alive than she does when she’s sitting right in front of me. ...I’m sorry. That’s probably terrible to say.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Alm says gently. He gives Faye’s shoulder a squeeze. “How have you been?”  
  
“Fine,” Faye says automatically, then remembers who she’s talking to. She blows out a sigh. “...Fried. It feels like it’s been a week since I last sat down.”  
  
“You’ve been working hard,” Alm nods. “I’m proud of you.”  
  
Faye curls an arm around Alm and gives him a squeeze, nuzzling into his chest.  
  
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For being here.”  
  
"Of course," Alm chuckles, a hand in Faye’s hair. “Where else would I be?”  
  
Faye looks up. Their eyes meet. Alm’s laughter fades.  
  
Even now, close as they are, there’s a space between them-- a gulf of loss, of grief, of want and hope and need. An inch of indecision.  
  
Until Faye closes the gap, and presses her lips to Alm’s own.  
  
They part with a sigh, studying each other’s eyes. Faye’s brows furrow in concern.  
  
“...Bad?” she asks.  
  
“No,” Alm exhales. “I don’t know.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Faye whispers, her voice suddenly very small. “I’m not her.”  
  
“Don’t,” Alm says sharply, tipping her chin up. “I never wanted you to be. Faye, you’re my best friend. I love you. But this just… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”  
  
“Without her,” Faye nods. “I understand.”  
  
Alm swallows hard. Nods. “...I’m sorry, Faye.”  
  
“Don’t,” Faye says gently. “Don’t apologize, after everything you’ve done for me.”  
  
“Do you…” Alm glances away, guilty. “...Do you want me to leave?”  
  
“No,” Faye breathes. “Never.”  
  
Their eyes meet. Alm lets out a shuddering breath, before pulling Faye into an embrace.  
  
“I love you,” Faye murmurs into Alm’s throat.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I loved her,” Faye chokes out.  
  
“I _know_ .”  
  
The truth of it burns a hole in her chest, finally saying it out loud for the very first time. Faye loves Alm. She loved Celica. And somehow, even when she herself doesn’t know exactly what that means, somehow, she knows he understands.  
  
Alm understands. And he doesn’t let go.  
  
~*~  
  
The days blend into weeks. Into months. Into years.  
  
Faye is seventeen years old. She’s stopped counting the days because, honestly, she’s had work to do. There were fields to tend. Herbs to pick. Snares to check. Every morning, walking the trail just before sunrise, rain or shine.  
  
It’s another beautiful morning in Ram Village. The skies are clear for miles. It’s a perfect day for Faye’s morning rounds in Fleecer’s Forest, but she’s not out on the trail. She’s hiding, in a little copse of trees ten minutes off the beaten path, her head in her hands.  
  
This isn’t an eleven-year-old, shattered by grief, burying her face in a bearskin rug. This is Faye, seventeen, almost a woman grown, and she’s _angry_ \-- angry at the world for just piling it on, angry that the world hasn’t ended and they have to live with their grief, angry that as she’s gotten older, pain and frustration have slowly become the status quo. Most of all, she’s angry at herself, because for as much as she’s dreaded this day, now that it’s finally arrived, the thing she feels most is relief.  
  
Ameen, for his part, doesn’t seem too bothered by Faye using his fur to vent her frustrations. As Alm steps into the clearing, Ameen greets him with a keening cry and an affectionate headbutt that nearly bowls Alm off his feet-- a comically sweet gesture from a creature with a beak more than capable of biting him in half.  
  
A pair of keening shrieks sound in the distance. Ameen lifts his head and answers the cry with a screech of his own, before bursting off the ground with a beat of his mighty wings. Faye watches him rise into the sky, joining his brethren on the hunt, before turning to Alm beside her. Her eyes are red, but she has no tears. Not even now.  
  
“Let me guess,” Faye mutters. “I’m going to be late.”  
  
“No,” Alm replies. “Well, yes. But I don’t care if we’re late. I just didn’t want you to be alone.”  
  
Faye smiles, if only just. She takes Alm’s hand and squeezes.  
  
“Love you,” she murmurs.  
  
“I know.”  
  
They return to the village, hand in hand, finding a spot in the gathered crowd beside a somber Kliff, looking stiff and awkward in his formal robes. Mycen stands before them, in the center of the village square. Mycen volunteered to read the rites, as Ram had no cleric of its own.  
  
“Exalted Mila,” he intones, his gruff voice as reverent as he can manage, “giver of life, giver of your bounty, and mother to us all: we ask of you a final boon: take Serafine Fletcher into your embrace…”  
  
Kliff hitches back a sob. Alm places a hand on his shoulder. Faye only fixes her eyes forward, and doesn’t make a sound.  
  
“Guide this soul to a place of plenty,” Mycen continues, “where justice is swift, pain is fleeting, and love is everlasting. Plant this soul in your garden, Mother Mila, and there she will bloom, evergreen…”  
  
It’s supposed to rain at funerals. Isn’t that the rule? But today, just as it was on the day Celica left, there’s not a cloud in the sky.  
  
Faye doesn’t mind. Mother Mila might not spare any tears, but neither will Faye. Her tears were spent long ago. And while Kliff crumbles with his friends beside him, Faye lifts her head, and stares, unblinking, into the light.  
  
~*~  
  
Life goes on.  
  
Faye’s eighteenth birthday comes and goes without too much fuss. Her daily routine doesn’t really change all that much. There’s still work to be done, after all. As much as Nana’s passing hurt, it wasn’t long before Ram was back to business as usual. Nana being gone just meant a few fewer chores on Faye’s schedule.  
  
Maybe that sounds callous. But that’s what this life does to you. Pain and loss, stress and struggle, they wear away your softness and innocence until you’re rough and hard.  
  
Alm is still her light. Her lifeline. But the shadow of Celica’s absence still clings to them both, even now, years later. He was like the moon; coming to her at a dark time in her life, giving her just enough light to help her not get lost and to send the demons fleeing to deeper shadows.  
  
But Celica was her sun, and without her, Faye withers.  
  
The days melt away into one depressive fugue after another. Life in the countryside is hardly glamorous. If you asked her what she did for the past year, Faye wouldn’t know what to tell you. Nothing comes to mind. But as Alm tells her, time and again:  
  
“You survived. That’s not nothing.”  
  
Maybe not. But it could be so much more.  
  
“Hey,” Alm says, stepping into their hideout on a gloomy, overcast morning.  
  
“Hey,” Faye murmurs, without turning around.  
  
“You picked a bad day to visit Ameen. It looks like rain,” Alm says lightly. He takes a seat on the log beside her, nodding towards the empty clearing before them. “Where is he?”  
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him, the past few days,” Faye mutters. “I was starting to get worried.”  
  
“He might be out hunting,” Alm reassures her. “He’ll be back. Don’t worry.”  
  
“Mm,” Faye murmurs a non-response. She feels Alm’s elbow against hers, looks down, and sees his hand, palm-up, on her knee. She laces their fingers together with a squeeze.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” Alm wonders.  
  
“Nana,” Faye replies, “and Celica. Why Celica leaving scarred me for life, and why Nana’s passing didn’t hit nearly as hard.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Alm says. “You were a kid. Things seem bigger when you’re a kid.”  
  
“Excuse me, maybe _you_ were a kid. _I_ was almost _fourteen_ ,” Faye teases.  
  
They laugh, trading shoves. Faye sighs, shaking her head.  
  
“Maybe you just had more time to prepare,” Alm offers, somber. “When those knights attacked us, Celica had to leave that day. But your Nana… she wasn’t really herself at the end, was she?”  
  
“No,” Faye breathes. “I guess not.”  
  
“Grief is about absence,” Alm says gently. “And she was already gone.”  
  
Faye nods. She bites her lip, gazing up at the clouds through the trees.  
  
“I’ve been thinking,” she begins. “About us.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Do you think we’ll still be this close in five years? Ten years?” Faye wonders. “Or do you think something will happen to split us apart?”  
  
“Where we go, we go together,” Alm says, like a prayer. “I would never leave you behind.”  
  
“Maybe not willingly,” Faye admits, “but look what happened to Celica. She didn’t get a choice. Now she’s gone. I’m scared, Alm. I love you. I rely on you. We got each other out of a dark place, but now I don’t know if I could go on without you.”  
  
“You’ll never have to,” Alm protests.  
  
“You don’t know that.” Faye sighs. “...Nothing lasts, Alm. I lost my parents. I lost Nana. We lost Celica. We’re going to lose Ameen someday, probably. I don’t know if I could handle losing you, too.”  
  
“We didn’t lose Celica,” Alm says, adamant.  
  
Faye scoffs. “Didn’t we?”  
  
“We didn’t,” Alm insists. “She promised we’d see her again. Remember?”  
  
“Alm," Faye murmurs, "do you _really_ think we’re ever going to see Celica again?”  
  
The question stops Alm in his tracks. He blinks, stunned.  
  
“I do,” Alm says, plaintive. “Don’t you?”  
  
Faye glances away. She blows out a sigh and leans into Alm, slumping against his shoulder.  
  
“Before she left, I gave Celica a necklace,” Faye recounts. “A broken arrow haft, with uneven fletching. Because an arrow with improper fletching won’t fly straight, you know? It might even come right back around. I want to believe she’s still out there, Alm, I want to believe she’ll find us again. But it’s been five years, and I’m just… I’m so tired, Alm. I’m so tired of hope.”  
  
Alm pulls Faye close, and she lets him, sinking into his embrace.  
  
“Well, maybe she’s taking so long because you shot the arrow so far away,” Alm murmurs, his eyes wet. “After all, you’re a hell of a shot.”  
  
Faye smiles, giving Alm a squeeze. “...You always know what to say.”  
  
“It’s because I read so many books,” Alm grins. “Which reminds me, did you get a chance to read--”  
  
“Oh, don’t you start!” Faye laughs.  
  
Rustling in the trees. The duo look up from their log to see Kliff, stumbling through the undergrowth in every way Faye was trained not to.  
  
“Guys,” he greets them with a nod.  
  
“Kliff,” Alm nods back. “How’d you find us?”  
  
Kliff stares at him. “...Mage.”  
  
“...Right.”  
  
“Listen,” Kliff urges, “you two need to get back to town right now.”  
  
~*~  
  
The pilgrimage doesn’t look like any Church procession Ram village has ever seen. They’re a ragtag group, all told, just a one-eyed mercenary and a gaggle of teenagers, the oldest of which-- a blue-haired nun-- barely looks nineteen..  
  
But none of that matters now.  
  
When Kliff ushers them out of the woods, they both stop in their tracks. Alm stares, stunned. There are tears in Faye’s eyes-- the way your eyes water when you stare into the sun.  
  
It’s her. She looks resplendent in white and gold, armed for battle with a sword at her hip, and with an entourage at her heels that says trouble is brewing in Valentia-- but it’s her.  
  
And when her best friends come racing down the hill and into her arms, tumbling her to the ground and rolling with her in the dirt, her mission to the Temple of Mila is the furthest thing from her mind.  
  
It’s been seven years. Celica is seventeen years old.  
  
She’s home.  
  
~*~


End file.
